Page 10 - Native Pride News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Native filmmakers are 'changing the narrative that history has kind of laid on us' Brandy McDonnell, Oklahoman © [Sundance Institute] "Little Chief," a narrative short film directed by indigenous filmmaker Erica Tremblay (Seneca-Cayuga) had its world premiere as part of the Shorts Selection at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Tremblay is original from Oklahoma and lensed the short in Oklahoma. The short film stars Lily Gladstone, left and Julian Ballentyne. For more than a century, cinema has been a favored American way to tell stories of different peoples and cultures.  B...

Melissa Rosenfelt Special to Oklahoman When a Native American woman realizes the power of her voice and her passion, she can never be silenced. Although Native American women represent 6% of Oklahoma’s population, this small group of women carry generations of traditions, culture and knowledge that have ensured the survival of Native American identities since the beginning of colonization. At the heart of Native American communities is the drum, which represents the supple, strong heartbeat that flows through Indigenous people. The drum is the heartline that connects the people to the land...

And political clout? Today’s tribes enjoy monumental influence.  That clout extends beyond the 30-plus Oklahoma Native Americans elected or appointed to influential state and federal positions over the past two decades.   One of those tribal members, Cherokee citizen and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, got a dose of the tribes’ political power shortly after taking office in January 2019.  Stitt entered into a high-stakes battle against his own tribe and others over how much casinos pay the state. But last July, a federal judge handed tribes a victory, ruling tribal compacts a...

A new book from Washington State University Press “Teaching Native Pride: Upward Bound and the Legacy of Isabel Bond” is now available. The book by Tony Tekaroniake Evans, of Ketchum, Idaho, provides first-hand accounts of Natives and non-Natives to tell the story of the Upward Bound program at the University of Idaho and Isabel Bond’s role in it. The Upward Bound program began in Moscow in 1969. Bond was the director in the early 1970s and ran the program for more than three decades. Those enrolled in Upward Bound had to live in a 200-mile radius and be the first in their fami...